Chapter 82: the flood swells his clothes and delivers him on

Abby's place is in a strip mall near a housing development. Both of them - the strip mall and the housing development - appear to have built at about the same time, probably to augment each other. Both of them are doing very poorly. The strip mall consists of a combination bail bond and check-cashing establishment, a nail salon and beauty supply store with a very dirty front window full of wigs, a store that claims to offer merely videos and novelties with its front window completely blacked out except for a pink neon sign, a liquor store, and a garishly lit Chinese food place with no tables and a couple of very disreputable looking kids smoking outside as they dig into containers of lo mein.

He was never with Merle at the times in question, but he knows a couple of deals went down here.

Beth's face is turned away from him as they pass through the dark, silent neighborhood - all bungalows with rusting iron porch pillars and stained siding - and he can't quite read her but he can practically feel the intensity of her attention. He knows she's traveled, and there are some poor parts of town and a few pieces of scraggly land not far from the farm on which rest only run-down trailers, but even so, as he pulls into the parking lot and stops he wonders if she's ever spent any significant time in a place like this - the kind of place that used to be the only kind in which he ever felt at all like he belonged. Even though he still didn't. Not really.

He never belonged anywhere until her.

She gives him a look as she gets out of the truck and heads over to him, glancing around and then back at him. The kids by the Chinese food place are staring at her, plastic forks gone still. Daryl looks her up and down with fresh eyes and sees her tight jeans, that jacket that accentuates the lines of her body rather than obscures them, her wonderfully messy ponytail further messed up by the wind, and the fact that, while about ninety percent of the time he doesn't even notice, she really does look a good bit younger than she is. By a couple of years. Before he actually knew how old she was, he assumed she was around sixteen. Maybe less. Probably not, but he wouldn't have been shocked.

He looks at the kids - more like in their early twenties at a guess - and makes the look a Look. Before he left he strapped his knife to his belt. Didn't expect to need it, but he's not stupid enough to fuck around. It's a big knife and he's made no effort to hide it. At about fifteen yards it'll be eminently visible.

Beth tilts her head. Mostly she's questioning, studying him, but a tiny smile is playing around the corners of her mouth. "You bring me here for some dinner, or to get my nails done, Mr. Dixon?"

"You're fuckin' hilarious."

"Damn right I am." She touches his arm. "Seriously, Daryl, why are we here?"

She doesn't sound upset in the least, doesn't even really sound concerned, but her gaze is bright and penetrating in the light from the Chinese food place, and it's clear that she's at a point where she's genuinely requiring some answers.

Well. He said he'd give her some. He lifts his hand, catches hers and threads their fingers. Makes sure the kids see it. Kind of hopes they'll note that he's old enough to be her father and be taken aback, because fuck them is why.

"Alright." He gives her a light tug. "C'mon."

Abby's shop - ASCENSION INK - is tucked between the liquor store and the bail bond place, the smallest of the three . The window is lit an orange-red and strung all around with Christmas lights, displays of flash occupying a lot of the space. Some of it is conventional stuff - kanji that says fuck knows, flowers, skulls, flowers and skulls, flowers and skulls and guns, pouncing tigers, naked and mythologically proportioned women, script. But some of it is anything but conventional. The light obscures a few of the finer details, but along with everything else - and set to the side rather than the center where it really should be - is a collection of more abstract designs. Delicately swooping shapes, intricate and complex. Faces and figures, some clear and some not, the shading fabulously subtle.

Birds.

Lots of birds. Perching, in flight, heads raised and beaks wide with song, singular and in groups. Peacocks with glorious floods of tail, robins and cardinals, murders of crows, murmurations of starlings, exaltations of larks. A rising phoenix shedding flaming feathers - two of them, seeming to dance. A spread-winged eagle - no sign of the patriotic flavor one usually finds accompanying eagles but instead a fundamental wildness that manages to be vaguely disturbing.

Birds themselves aren't exactly unconventional, in fact. But these are - the colors vivid, the linework flawless, the shading making them almost appear to move.

Daryl is leading Beth toward the door, but abruptly she stops, gazing at the flash, and he's not surprised. He had been hoping she might see it. Might be caught by it. She drops his hand, and as he watches she slowly raises hers, presses it against the glass.

"Wow," she whispers.

"Yeah." The smile washes over him and he couldn't have resisted it even if for some ridiculous reason he wanted to. "The other stuff... She does it 'cause she has to. That's what people ask for. But the birds..." He lays a hand on her shoulder. "She does those 'cause she loves 'em." She can't not.

Because they're in her bones.

Beth doesn't turn. But he can just see the dim reflection of her face in the window, lit a deep and somehow lovely red, and he thinks about the first time he saw her singing in the coffee shop and knew he was a lost fucking cause, when he saw her and knew she was the only thing he wanted to see. The only thing he would need to see for the rest of his life.

That's no longer true. But he sees her now and it fills him up, and nothing else is ever going to be like this. Nothing. There's her and no one else. No matter what happens, there's only her.

Girl, I love you so much it might still kill me. I swear, it might.

"You're here to get it finished, aren't you." Not a question, and so soft he has to really listen to hear it. He feels it vibrating through her chest, under his hand, all through her.

He squeezes her shoulder. "Mhmm."

Then she does turn and she looks up at him, face now thrown mostly into shadow. He lifts his hand and cups her jaw, thumb against the corner of her mouth, stroking slowly across her lips. "I want you to see it," he murmurs, and he doesn't know where the words come from and he didn't intend them, but they're true at the very cellular level.

"Never been to a place like this."

As he suspected. He nearly smirks. "I'm corruptin' you."

"You already did that." She closes a hand around his wrist, pushes up on her toes and kisses him - just a graze of her lips but it presses his eyes closed, sends a flush outward from his chest and all through him. "Let's go."

He pulls open the door, touches her shoulder again and ushers her inside.

If Aaron's place felt bigger inside than it appeared from the street, Abby's feels smaller. Not cramped, not quite, but the walls hug close and the dimness in the front exacerbates the effect. More flash papers everything, bounces the light around oddly, but behind the counter in Abby's workspace the light is bright and strangely cheerful. It's not the word Daryl would have expected to employ, but it does fit fairly well.

It feels good to be here. Did the first time he walked in. It felt exactly right.

Abby - a curvy woman with a buzz cut and skin such a dark brown that it makes the whites of her black eyes seem to actually glow - is in the back, working on a redheaded woman's bicep. It's impossible to see what she's doing, but Abby herself is intent, pierced brows drawn together, hand moving with exquisite steadiness as she maneuvers the needle. She pauses and glances up, gives him a quick smile. "Have a seat," she calls. "Got about fifteen minutes here, then I'll be with you."

Beth is moving slowly around the edges of the room, arms crossed, attention still fixed on the flash. Daryl slings both their coats onto a hook and sinks onto a folding chair with a padded seat patched here and there with black duct tape, and follows her progress. He hasn't stopped smiling, not completely, and if he had any remaining doubts about whether bringing her was a good idea, they disintegrated about five minutes ago.

The flash on the walls is more of the usual - all very skillful, but none done with as much care and obvious enthusiasm as the birds in the window. Of course Beth knows that, spotted it instantly; she would know love like that when she sees it. Better than most people. So she's looking, but she's not as impressed as she was. Maybe she's never been in a place like this, but he's guessing she can make sense of everything she's seeing.

After a moment or two she comes over and sits down beside him, still scanning everything. "It's just her?"

"Just her. Sometimes she has friends come in to help, but it's all hers."

"How'd you meet her?"

Shrug. "Bar." He gestures in her direction, at her bare right arm, which is turned toward them and totally covered with a sleeve of black interlocking branches wound with blue dawnflower vines. Sparrows nestle in among it all, a few so well hidden they're not immediately obvious. "Saw that. Asked her about it. She didn't do it - I mean, obviously - but she designed it."

"It's not like your others," she murmurs, and he's not certain if she means Abby's sleeve or his wing. Or both. But the same answer applies.

"No."

"Why did you get the other one on your back?" She looks up at him, eyes very wide and again very bright. Too sharp to be doe eyes now. "The... I dunno if they're angels or demons. Those things. What do they mean?"

He looks back at her. Then away. He didn't anticipate this question. Maybe he should have.

"I don't remember," he says, soft.

Did it ever mean anything? Did it need to?

"What does the wing mean?"

And she must know that. She must at least feel it. But there's another side to this, one that will probably surprise her, and it's not that he doesn't know how to phrase it, at least not entirely. He was pushed into it and he went without resistance, no time to think or ask questions, no time even to come up with any to ask, and all he had been sure of after was how it made him feel.

In the shower that first time in the house of light, allowing himself to begin to return to her in his mind. His hand on his cock with the ghost of hers, coming so hard, breaking open with it, his skin tearing and the wing bursting free.

It did happen. It didn't, but it did.

"I don't know," he whispers.

It's more like ten minutes before Abby finishes up with the woman. Daryl waits the rest of the time in silence and Beth waits in it with him, silent as well beneath the steady buzz of the needle and the Offspring on the staticky radio (and it feels like heaven's so far away). Halfway through it, her hand finds his where it's resting on his thigh and covers it, small and soft and warm.

He didn't expect it to feel like this. He isn't sure what he was expecting. She has a hand on his chest and she's pressing hard, even if neither of hers have actually moved.

Abby makes him jump when suddenly she's standing in front of him, hands on her hips, looking down at him with undisguised amusement. "You comin', or what?"

He coughs, shakes himself a little and tugs his hand from beneath Beth's. "Yeah. Yeah, 'm ready."

"Good. Got you some water, you're gonna want it." She transfers her attention to Beth, her amusement turning just a touch quizzical. "You brought your dau-" she begins, and whether it's his face or Beth's face or the way they were touching that stops her cold, Daryl will never know, and it doesn't matter. Comprehension sweeps across Abby's face, and he sees a flicker of bemused surprise before it slips away.

If he's going to go out in public with her - any kind of public - this is probably just going to happen periodically. Daughter. Little sister. Niece. Whatever. Even if there's no trace whatsoever of family resemblance. He takes a breath, solidifies something between his chest cavity and gut, and gets to his feet.

Abby nods toward the back. "Alright."

"Can she come back?"

Again that flicker, and when he glances at Beth he sees something there too, half obscured by shadow. Not apprehension. It's not that she doesn't want to. Not that at all. But something. This isn't nothing to her. Of course it wouldn't be.

Showing her things... Somehow, to her, it's everything.

Abby shrugs. "If she keeps quiet and stays outta the way, guess there's no harm." She looks at Beth again, and appears to be gauging something. "It's gonna be a couple hours at least."

"I'm fine," Beth says softly.

Abby shrugs again and leads the way.

It is cramped back there with the three of them, but Beth finds a place in the far corner, a bare stretch of table; she hops up and perches, and once more she looks around, taking everything in with wide eyes - hungry for detail. Every last one.

He wonders when she last saw something almost completely new to her.

And then she's watching him as he strips off his shirt and lowers himself into the chair, straddling it, and it's...

He didn't expect it to feel like this. At all.

He shivers when Abby slides a gloved hand across his back, and again at the cool wetness when she starts to swab the area. "Healed up good, anyway. Mostly. It's still gonna hurt like twenty kinds of fuck, you sure you wanna do this?"

Beth. He can't look away from her. She's all he can see. She's almost close enough to touch but it's like she's on stage, brilliant with the lighting and with what she's doing, with what she's drawing out of herself. She's quiet now, but he's just as helpless. Just as much of a mess inside. It's always going to be like this.

Always.

"I'm sure," he murmurs.

It does hurt. A lot.

Yet another lesson he learned very early is that pain has a texture and a complexity that most and more fortunate people don't ever get to appreciate. Dullness, sharpness, jagged edges and a kind of relentless smoothness; hardness and softness and yielding firmness in between. There are aches and stabs and the rhythmic pounds of a heartbeat. Surface and core. Length and duration, during which it might change any number of ways. So many kinds of pain and so many ways to feel it. So many ways to suffer.

What he learned later was that pain itself is actually value-neutral. That it isn't automatically unpleasant. That most of the time it is, but there can be exceptions. The ache of a weary muscle - tired but not pushed too far. Tight and worked loose by stretching. A tattoo needle - yes, that had been a very specific time, the first one he got, the demon inside his upper arm - fully sober and fully able to feel it.

And her. What she does to him. That's good pain. It hurts so much less than it did, the bad pain melted away, but not all of it is gone, and he's glad.

This pain starts as a low burning sting, bearable, and he breathes through it and is lulled by the buzz, finds a rhythm and rides it for a while, his eyes slipping closed. But gradually it deepens and sharpens and drills into him, and the burning bleeds into searing, and he clenches his teeth and presses his cheek against the back of the chair and has to struggle a little to keep the rhythm.

But it's not bad. Still. It's not bad at all, and bit by bit he feels the slow, smooth release of the endorphins. And when he finally does open his eyes, squinting into a blur of light and uncertain how long he's even been there, she's there, and she's watching him.

When she comes into focus he loses the rhythm entirely. He can't breathe at all.

He's never seen her look like that. Like she really is seeing something entirely new - which she is, but he doesn't think it's just this place or even what's happening to him. There's something else there. Deeper. Heavier. Her face is flushed and her eyes are incredibly bright, her lips slightly parted. She twitches when he meets her gaze and blinks a few times, but doesn't shift her attention.

Something on him. In him. Hugging the back of the chair, legs spread and half stripped with her looking at him like that, he feels naked in a way that has more to do with skin than clothes, and the needle scorching its way across his back hammers heat into him, through his blood and through everything, and he feels himself hardening at the same instant he sees her squeezing her thighs together.

A trembling breath escapes him and his eyes fall half shut. He's being swallowed by burning agony, and the urge to rock his hips and seek the pressure of the chair's back is nearly overwhelming, and it's all he can do to keep from moaning her name.

He whispers it. Mouths it. Knows she sees.

It's all different after that. The endorphins are a sweet, tingling blanket tucking over his nerves, but they won't last, and anyway he doesn't want them to. He wants to feel it, wants her to see him feeling it, every second of it on his face. They break for water and to allow him a chance to breathe, and when Abby starts in again he begins to float off into a kind of heavy brightness. This all happened last time he was here, except it didn't, because then he was alone in it. Now he's so hard - pain there too, or close to it - pressing against the firm leather of the seat and his own damn fly, heat pulsing through him as Beth takes him in.

And she's feeling it too. He knows she is. She's just as taken as him.

He could come like this. He's just about convinced. Enough pressure and enough rhythm and he could just come into the drift, with this wonderful swarm of wasps singing their way over him. It might be possible.

A second break. He has some water and only as it touches the back of his throat does he realize how thirsty he is, and he has to fight himself to keep from gulping. But when Abby asks him how he's doing, answering her is difficult. Talking at all is difficult. He's ridden endorphin highs before, but not like this, and when he settles against the chair again and the tide of pain washes back over him, it's a relief. Because he doesn't have to do anything. All he has to do is be there.

If the pain is a tide so is his focus, and it comes in and goes out. Sometimes he can see Beth, look at her and meet that wide, fathomless blue, and at other times it all blurs away and he has to close his eyes and draw inward, burrow into the fill-and-empty of his lungs and the pistoning squeeze of his heart.

And through it all he's so fucking hard.

He can't possibly get any harder, in fact, but it feels like he is. Like everything in him is swelling, his capillaries expanding and veins flooding, a kind of pressure that he's never felt before building and building. All at once he can focus clearly and she's boring into him harder and sharper than the needle, destroying the distance between them without even moving. He wanted her to see this and she is, she's seeing everything, she's seeing what no one else ever has, her eyes comprising his universe, and all at once the pressure building in him releases, surges up from the base of his spine and lights him up like his nervous system is strung with those Christmas lights, a cascade of blinding color. He squeezes his eyes shut and hugs the chair, lays his head down and sighs, and he hears her draw in a quiet breath and God, he is coming, coming so slow and deep-

Except he's not. Or not exactly. It's not that kind of release. It's another wave that he's riding and it sweeps him out and returns him, beaches him, but it never shakes him. Never bursts him open. He's absolutely positive that if he slipped a hand into his pants right now, he would feel nothing sticky.

But he came. He did. It's just never been like that.

And he's still so hard.

She manipulates time. He's starting to think he can too. Maybe this is her and maybe it's him and maybe it's both or it's neither, but after that everything becomes indistinct, fluid, and he drifts deeper into a place that's like the sensation of burying his face in her hair, until suddenly the buzzing is gone and the wasps have flown away, and all that's left is a pounding burn that flares as he feels Abby wiping away the last of the ink and blood.

And Beth's hand, weaving fingers through his, small and soft and warm.

He lifts his head and stares up at her. Abby is saying something, but he can't make it out. There's just Beth, only Beth, a world of her, and he knows he was supposed to bring her with him. She was supposed to be here.

She'll take him home.

She has to help him walk out.

Abby is, if anything, even more amused, asks Beth if she can handle him, expresses mostly joking dubiousness when she gets a dry yeah, I'm pretty much used to it in response. Somehow he scrapes together the alertness to pay, to toss in a very generous tip, to get the keys from his pocket and into Beth's hands, and to not trip over his own feet on the way across the parking lot.

The kids are gone. He has no idea what time it is, but it feels late. Some general ideal type of Lateness. After midnight, maybe. Probably. He's musing on the malleability of spacetime when Beth gets him into the passenger's seat, practically shoves him, lets out an exasperated laugh that twists into concern and a hand on his shoulder when his back collides with the seat and he whimpers.

"'m okay," he breathes, gently bats her hands away. "I'm... Swear. 'm fine."

"Jeez, you are drunk." His door closing, then the driver's side opening and the creak of the seat as she climbs in, starts the engine. The light from the Chinese food place is thrumming in his vision, vibrating at the edges, but it fades when she combs a hand into his hair and he closes his eyes.

"Are you alright?" Her lips against the corner of his mouth. "Really?"

He nods. He is. He's very, very, very all right. Very.

There's also no way in hell he would be capable of driving himself back.

"I am."

"Okay." Her mouth again, and she's wearing that sweet lip gloss. The kind she wore the first night in the rain. He doesn't know why he didn't notice it before.

The fresh, cool scent of her hair, the deeper smell of her skin, the faint salt he knows he would taste there - and more. Lower. He knows what she smells like when she's turned on, when she's wet, and she is now. And he'd lost most of his erection before he even got up, but suddenly the heat is rushing back, humming into him, and he smiles.

He's burning.

"That was..." She swallows and pulls back a little, and when he turns his head she's searching his face, her tongue flicking across her lips. "That was amazing."

He breathes a laugh - happy, Jesus, he's so damn happy - and closes his eyes again. By the time the ground starts sliding away beneath them, he's flying, carried into the night by a guitar like a horse in full gallop as an opening salvo of raindrops hits the windshield.

there's four new colors in the rainbow
an old man's taking Polaroids
but all he captures is endless rain, endless rain, endless rain
he says listen, takes my head and puts my ear to his
and I swear I can hear the sea

sometimes when I look in your eyes
I can see your soul

Note: songs are"Gone Away" by the Offspring and "Sometimes" by James.